SCOTUS stays the execution of Richard Glossip - in the only Western country with the death penalty
“Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?” ― Robert A. Heinlein
SCOTUS stays an execution
On Friday, the US Supreme Court stayed the execution of Richard Glossip, a man on death row in Oklahoma. On the one hand, considering the current conservative makeup of the Court, this stay seems to go against their biblical sense of extreme and violent justice. On the other, when you look at the facts of the case, it is astounding that Glossip is even in prison, let alone on death row in the only Western industrial country that still has the death penalty.
The crime
On January 7, 1997, Justin Sneed beat Barry Van Treese to death with a baseball bat at the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City, OK. Van Treese owned the hotel. Sneed was the maintenance man. And Glossip was the manager.
Offered a deal to escape the death penalty, Sneed confessed to the murder and claimed it was done at Glossip’s behest. He also claimed they split the $4,000 Van Treese had in his car. Sneed said Glossip wanted Van Treese dead because Glossip had been stealing money from the hotel and was about to be fired. Glossip denied the charge. Maintaining his innocence, he refused a plea deal.
The trials
In July 1998, a jury convicted Glossip of murder and sentenced him to death. In 2001, the state appeals court threw out the conviction - unanimously. The court called the case "extremely weak" and ruled Glossip’s defense lawyer was unconstitutionally ineffective.
In August 2004, a second jury convicted Glossip of the murder and again sentenced him to death. Glossip claimed prosecutors had intimidated his defense attorney into resigning. In April 2007, the appeals court affirmed the death sentence with a split decision, 3-2.
Further appeals
Glossip’s appeals lawyers claimed that Sneed was a meth addict who made his story up. They further pointed to a 1997 psychiatric interview in which Sneed did not mention Glossip’s involvement. They also said that Glossip’s trial attorneys had done “a terrible job. Horrible. No preparation. No investigation."
A fellow inmate of Sneed’s claimed that Sneed admitted he had lied about Glossip’s involvement. The Oklahoma police admitted there may have been problems with handling the evidence. There was enough doubt that even Pope Francis asked Oklahoma to refrain from killing Glossip.
Regardless, in September 2015, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals voted 3-2 to proceed with the execution.
Stays of execution (here is where it gets messy)
However, in October 2014, OK AG Scott Pruit (who became Trump’s EPA Administrator) said the state had run out of the drugs authorized to execute people. In January 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court halted executions in Oklahoma until the state decided which lethal injection drugs were acceptable and available.
Glossip’s case dragged on until he was scheduled to be executed on September 22, 2022. On August 16, 2022, OK Gov. Kevin Stitt granted a 60-day stay of execution. Glossip was rescheduled for execution on December 8, 2022. On November 3, 2022, Governor Stitt again granted a stay of execution for Glossip. He was rescheduled to be executed on February 16, 2023.
On January 24, 2023, Glossip's execution was rescheduled to May 18, 2023, after OK AG Gentner Drummond requested a new execution timetable because of staff shortages in the Corrections Dept. In March 2023, Drummond announced his office would seek to stay the execution until 2024 to allow an independent counsel to review the case.
In April 2023, after the independent review was completed, Drummond filed a motion to vacate Glossip’s murder conviction. He said there was enough doubt of his guilt “that the death penalty and his conviction for murder is inappropriate.”
On April 20, 2023, despite this doubt, the state Court of Criminal Appeals ruled against Richard Glossip. This meant that barring clemency or further appeals to the US Supreme Court, Glossip would be executed by lethal injection on May 18.
In late April 2023, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board denied Glossip clemency in a 2-2 ruling. Glossip needed a majority.
In May 2023, Glossip's attorneys petitioned the US Supreme Court citing new evidence that had come to light that shed doubt on the reliability of the state's star witness Justin Sneed, the man who was convicted of actually carrying out the murder of Barry Van Treese. On May 5, the Supreme Court halted Glossip's execution.
Reflections on an Abomination
How can a reasonable person look at the Glossip saga and claim that executing this man is moral or ethical action? Despite the state Attorney General saying the case against Glossip is crap, Governor Kevin Stitt says that he has taken an oath to follow the law and will not intervene and stop Glossip's execution unless the courts step in to act based on either new evidence or procedural error.
Why does Stitt think governors have clemency powers if not for this exact circumstance?
In a death penalty advocate’s perfect world, a murderer, with competent counsel, facing overwhelming direct and circumstantial evidence, would be conclusively found guilty, sentenced to death, and after state and federal appeals would be executed expeditiously. That is not the reality of the death penalty in America.
It is capricious, arbitrary, racist, error-ridden, interminable, expensive, and uncivilized. It is perverse for a state to say that killing people is wrong. And then, to show just how wrong it is, kill people.
I will save the arguments against the death penalty for another piece. However, consider which countries have the death penalty and which do not. Then decide which side America should be on. Are we a liberal democracy? Or should we be aligned with murderous absolute monarchies and tyrannical autocracies?
I know which side Jesus would pick. And I also know with which side conservative evangelicals feel most simpatico. It is why the Bible Belt is fertile soil for state-mandated killings.